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A Cease and Desist (C&D) is a letter demanding that someone stop doing something, or face legal consequences. For fans, this most often means a letter sent by a legal representative of a corporation, demanding that the fan shut down a fan website, remove fanfiction, remove fanvids, remove images, etc., that the corporation believes infringes on its rights.

Since most fans don't have the financial means to risk a court case -- and may well agree that their work was infringing, even if not maliciously meant -- C&Ds are usually obeyed. Fan sites/fanworks come down, either permanently or to be moved quietly to a new location, possibly under a different name.

More recently, U.S. corporations have also begun turning to DMCA notices sent to U.S.-based ISPs and webhosting companies, who are obligated by law to comply and remove or block the "infringing" content without investigating any further -- the default assumption is that any DMCA claim is legitimate. It's then up to the fan to contest the claim (assuming they even find out who submitted it), which again, most fans don't have the resources to do.

Mercedes Lackey previously allowed fans to write fan fiction in her Valdemar universe only if they signed a release form and only if the fan fiction was not posted online [3]. More recently, she has announced that fanfic in her original worlds is permissible under a Creative Commons license.[4]

In October 2000, Fandom, Inc. sent a C&D to Carol Burrell claiming that her domain, fandom.tv, infringed on their (non-existent) trademark of the term "fandom", and demanding that she transfer the domain to them and never use the word "fandom" in a domain name again. Burrell chose not to comply. (See Fandom, Inc. for details.)

In 2007, Funimation sent C&D letters to two fansub groups working on Gonzo's RomeoxJuliet. Both groups complied.[10] This was the first publicized C&D sent to a North American fansub group while an anime series was still airing in Japan.[11]